1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus of identifying ink stored in an ink-jet cartridge for an ink-jet printing device for identifying and ensuring ink stored in an inkjet printing device is the original factory ink or not.
2. Related Art
Ink-jet printers have been widely used for providing high quality printing on any paper. They have such features as energy saving, printing fast without any noise, good portability as being compact, and, in particular, easy to manufacture. Thus, they are popular for personal or office uses.
Nevertheless, the ink-jet cartridge design is the most important one in the ink-jet printer manufacturing. Generally, the ink-jet cartridge contains an ink reservoir, a print head, and an ink supply port or an ink passage between the ink reservoir and the print head. In some designs, there is an additional ink chamber. Aside from those, it also contains the ink for printing.
It is very popular in the market to use the device of the refill ink for re-filling an ink-jet cartridge. However, in the aspect of the customers, it will cause the print head damage by using the refill ink and in the aspect of the manufacturers, it will be the disadvantages of the customers' using the refill ink and lowering the amount of using the print head. Therefore, developing an apparatus of identifying ink stored in an ink-jet cartridge and an identifiable ink is surely necessary to satisfy the above reasons.
The ink can be classified into the dye type and the pigment type. In terms of its composition, the ink contains: (1) water, which is about 70% to 80% by weight; (2) dye; (3) solvent, etc. Therefore, if one wants to change the property of the ink, the modification can be made on (1) the composition of the ink and (2) the ratio of the components in the ink. The ink design can thus be achieved by changing these two properties.
In conventional design, it can't identify whether an ink stored in the ink-jet cartridge is the original factory ink or not by the material property of the ink. The instant invention provides a further detector in conventional design of the print head and the detector cooperates with an identifiable ink, adding a special additive thereinto or changing the composition thereof, for achieving the goal of identifying whether the ink is the original factory ink or not and it will be customers' and manufacturers' great advantages.